2024 Kickoff Release of WPILib

We are pleased to announce the availability of the 2024 kickoff release (2024.1.1) of WPILib, the official FIRST libraries for robot programming in Java and C++.

Changes for 2024

The big news is we are adding Python to our pantheon of WPILib text-based languages--thanks to the efforts of the RobotPy project team, WPILib now has support for Java, C++, and Python! We've also worked with FRC Team 6328, Mechanical Advantage, to bundle their powerful data log analysis tool (AdvantageScope) into the WPILib installer to make it more accessible to teams.

There have been many additions and new features added by the WPILib development team over the past year. We encourage all teams to read the New for 2024 page in the documentation for all the details! Some statistics (just for the main WPILib repository): 646 commits were made since 2023.4.3 by 45 contributors, touching nearly 3,800 files, with 394,976 added and 137,086 removed lines.

Installation Instructions

Note: Minimum system requirements: WPILib requires 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, Ubuntu 22.04, or macOS 12 or higher. C++ teams should note that Visual Studio 2022 is required for desktop builds. Mac users will need to have the Xcode Command Line Tools installed before running the installer. This can be done by running xcode-select --install in the Terminal.

Thanks and an Ask

WPILib is run by a small team of volunteers and the community. Many of the features and tools included in WPILib started as community projects or ideas. As the new season begins, we challenge you when writing the next exciting project or feature to think about how you can best share your work with the community! Some projects would be great additions to WPILib and we would love the chance to include them. This is also true of any issues you run into using the current library, we are always looking to make things better for teams! We encourage you to talk to us and discuss what you are doing and how it could fit into future plans. You can reach us on GitHub, Discord, and Chief Delphi.

WPILib's core members are as follows.

  • Amanda Bessette @arbessette
  • Ryan Blue @Ryan_Blue
  • Jonah Bonner @jwbonner
  • Sam Carlberg @SamCarlberg
  • Jason Daming @jdaming
  • Thad House @Thad_House
  • Peter Johnson @Peter_Johnson
  • Prateek Machiraju @Prateek_M
  • Brad Miller @BradAMiller
  • Joe Pokorny @jpokornyiii
  • Joe Ross @Joe_Ross
  • Austin Shalit @AustinShalit
  • Yotam Shlomi @starlight220
  • Dalton Smith @Daltz3
  • Dustin Spicuzza @virtuald
  • Tyler Veness @calcmogul
  • David Vo @auscompgeek
  • Vasista Vovveti @vyo
  • Zhiquan Yeo @zeequeue

We would also like to call out the translation coordinators for the documentation. These people help make WPILib accessible to teams all around the world.

  • Ofek Ashery (Hebrew)
  • Regis Bekale (French)
  • Hasan Bilgin (Turkish)
  • Luca Carvalho (Portuguese)
  • Miguel Angel de León Adame (Spanish)
  • Jacob Lubecki (Japanese)
  • Bruno Toso (Portuguese)
  • Atlus Zhang (Chinese)
  • Min Zhang (Chinese)

Major past contributors to WPILib include Eli Barnett, Jaci Brunning, Evan Gilgenbach, Alex Henning, Jonathan Leitschuh, James Kuszmaul, Toby Macaluso, Paul Malmsten, Peter Mitrano, Kevin O'Brien, Grant Perkins, Patrick Plenefisch, Fred Silberberg, and Griffin Tabor.

In addition to these volunteers, many members of the community contribute code, open issues, give ideas, and provide feedback. A huge thanks to these members of the community for their amazing contributions to the library and to the many beta testers this fall.

Peter Johnson